In the orthodontic treatment of patients, orthodontic appliances are secured to a patient's teeth. This most commonly involves the cementing of orthodontic archwire supporting brackets to crown surfaces of the patient's teeth. Standard orthodontic appliances are designed to fit average dental anatomies. An orthodontist using standard appliances selects, from the standard appliances available, appliances most suited for the particular patient's dental anatomy, to thereby minimize the amount of manual shaping of the appliance, such as bending the archwire, that the orthodontist must employ. In order to use the standard appliances to most effectively obtain the benefits of the appliance design in minimizing manual manipulation by the orthodontist, accurate placement of the appliance on the teeth at the precise positions contemplated in the appliance design is necessary. For this purpose, various gages and jigs have been proposed.
With the use of the custom orthodontic appliance such as those described in the related U.S. patent applications referred to above, it is possible that orthodontic finishing treatment proceed with almost no manual shaping of the appliance by the orthodontist. With such a custom appliance, however, the accurate placement of the appliance on the teeth is even more important than with the use of standardized appliances made to average geometries.
The provision of placement jigs for accurately securing orthodontic appliances to the teeth of a patient is most effective where the time and difficulty in using the jigs is kept to a minimum and where the likelihood of error in the use of the jig is similarly reduced. With the development of more refined designs of orthodontic appliances, and particularly with the use of custom designed orthodontic appliances, there is an increased need for error-free placement jigs that are easy for the orthodontist to use.